Without the Two
by the-marauder's-diary
Summary: Inspired by hpfanfictionprompts.'s prompt 451: Hermione starts tutoring Theodore Nott in Ancient Runes (not that he actually needs it). Except, he kind of does. The two will find comfort in each other, filling the voids that are the wrong shape. A story about not getting what you wanted, and it being better that way.
1. His first

**_Author's Note: _**And I have returned! Sorry I've been gone so long, just had to deal with life ect. It's great to be back, and I hope you haven't missed me too much. Now, Theodore has always been a wonder to me, just like the marauders there was hardly anything written about both of them and my mind is free to wonder.

A few notes: -There is more to this fanfiction, and I will update obviously.  
- If you don't like the storyline/ how it is written then I really don't mind there's no one with a gun to your head forcing you to read it. I like how I've written it, and if you have any CONSTRUCTIVE criticism I'd love to have your opinion. If you see any spelling mistakes please let me know.

- **THIS. IS. AN. AU. MEANING- ALTERNATE UNIVERSE. **I guess you could place it in sixth year if you were that desperate.  
- There won't be a great deal on the other characters. This is a very introspective story (deal with it).

Hope you enjoy, lovelies.

* * *

The ticking of his watch sounds like fingernails down a blackboard. All he can see are the shadows reflected in his mind. And it will be like this tomorrow, and the next day, and the next. His shirt feels like sandpaper.

* * *

He imagines people's voices like how they were in the forties. Once, he'd gone to a muggle museum for an exhibition and they were playing an old movie. It was black and white and fuzzy, like how he sees faces now, and the man's voice as he drank was raw. And her's was gripping. And he likes to imagine people sounding like that, so careless and real.

At least with insomnia he has time to work. Though it's not very good, the words won't stick to his brain. They slide off and make puddles in his lungs.

Professor Babblin's voice is like a radio that's just a small bit louder than silence. He can hear it, but he can't make sense of anything.

He imagines Draco with smoke swirling around his face, a black fedora set jauntily on his head. "And you getting this?" He wishes he had a long black coat to flutter by his ankles, one that would flow back when he ran.

"You need help, Theodore." He needs a drink is what he needs.

Sometimes when he's drunk, he imagines that he's sleeping. Even though he's still awake, but he can't feel the cold and he can't see anything really.

* * *

He stopped realising the way his fingers shake, and how his skin is almost transparent. When he was young, his mother used to tell him he must've died and become a ghost. But he'd checked and he still bumped into walls.

Sometimes he thinks he can see his mother, floating along with the other Hogwarts ghosts. He thinks she would have liked that. He thinks she would have liked the Fat Friar.

"Can't you just eat something?" Draco looks dark next to Theodore. Draco looks big next to Theodore. Theodore is taller, but Draco eats everyday.

He imagines that the shadows have filled his stomach, and he can't feel the soft pangs in his gut anymore.

* * *

Slytherin won the Quidditch match. Blaise is dancing on a table. The whole house is shouting and laughing. The whole house is drunk. He imagines them all, either in swing dresses or suits and sports jackets. He imagines plump red lips and elegant up-dos. And canes.

He imagines them hand in hand with music that is sharp, blaring from gold instruments. He imagines taking her in the centre, and dipping her low and kissing her.

He imagines kissing her a little longer.

But she walks over with Draco's arm around her waist, a sour smell on her lips as she leans into him. "Are you alright, Theodore?" He imagines her in a floral dress, and stockings. He imagines kissing her again and again and again.

"Why don't you get him a drink, Pansy?" She does as Draco says, and Theo imagines the way her hips would look in that floral dress as she walks away.

Draco sits down and doesn't talk. He stays there until Theo has a drink in his hand, and then shoots him a look that is part apologetic, part eager. And in that look Theodore knows where he and Pansy are going and he imagines instead taking her to the Astronomy tower, showing her the stars and watching the way they reflect off her eyes.

He stays where he is past when the party is over and Blaise is asleep in his lap.

* * *

He remembers being terrified of disappointing his mother when he was younger. Because she wouldn't yell or scream or cry, she would just want to. And he could always see it in her face, the way she would sigh and her eyes would look away from him and she would be still. And that look would scare him so much that he would fall to the ground and beg for forgiveness.

That is the look on the face of his Ancient Runes professor.

"This is just unacceptable." He looks at the way her cheeks make little lines between her words, as if she wants to say something else but she can't. She probably wants to curse him.

Ancient Runes is his favourite subject, but he can't force himself to listen anymore. He reads ahead, but he doesn't remember it. He doesn't listen when he reads because of the cotton in his ears and the shadows in his stomach.

She tells him his tutor will meet him in the classroom after school.

* * *

She sits there and talks as though he can hear her. She is worn and tired and he imagines that it's three in the morning and she is like him. He imagines that he isn't the only one who can't see past the shadows.

He stares at the way her hands shuffle through the pages of the textbook. Her fingers are delicate, her nails are odd sizes. As though she cuts them at different times. There is dry skin over her knuckles.

"You should know this chapter well. She likes this chapter and the exam will revolve around it." Her eyes are filled with light, or something less hopeful. Something that is hollow, but bright.

His eyes move to examine her chapped lips, they're moving. He sits and watches her, until she gets up and leaves.

A piece of parchment sits before him, her neat slanted writing covering the page, tiptoeing across it with little feathered feet.


	2. Her first

_**Author's Note:** _What up, what up it's new fic chapter o'clock! You'll work out the pace of the story from this next chapter. If you want me to spell it out for you, well, that's probably a bit of a warning sign. Review if you want, don't if you don't. I don't know how long it'll be until they get it on so sorry be patient. Alright, l8r.

* * *

Her uncle had hit her once, just once. When she was eight and upset and she wouldn't stop crying, he'd come over and slapped her cheek. She'd never seen him again after that.

Years later, her mother told her that he'd died. He'd gotten into his car drunk, he drove himself into a tree. Her mother said that no one knew if he meant to do it or not. She said that he hit people because he was sad.

Hermione understands that. The sadness, maybe even the hitting. She finds herself attracted to people who don't. Because she doesn't like to think about it.

Perhaps that's why she can't stand Theodore Nott.

She's never spoken to him. He always seems to be in another time, another place, speaking to people he finds interesting. The way he stares at nothing reminds her of the way she stares at Professor McGonagall when the woman reveals for a moment the part of her that holds her passion.

He just looks so captivated. She wants to know what's so fascinating.

* * *

Thumbing the pages of novels makes her feel complete. She likes the roughness; she likes how real they are. She likes how they've been in so many different hands, the words singing out in so many different heads, so many different voices and here she is holding it.

She likes the simplicity.

There are rowdy Ravenclaws behind her. Their laughs shatter the historic serenity in which she bathes. She came to the library to move away from the noise of the common room. She didn't want to bring it with her.

"Quiet!" She hisses, and they still.

She is frustrated. She is frustrated by the way Nott ignored her. She is frustrated that Professor Babblin all but forced her to tutor him.

"You're my best student and I want him to do well!" She'd gone on with compliments for a full two minutes before Hermione gave in.

And he'd just sat there, in his other world filled with other people and he hadn't said anything. With this look on his face that reminded her of her uncle's when he was drinking. He'd stare at the fireplace and he wouldn't move for hours.

Nott had looked like that. He'd looked lost.

* * *

They were kissing again. Harry was going green.

"This is unnecessary." She mutters. They don't stop. It looks like a washing machine with lips and tongue and saliva.

Suddenly her toast doesn't look so appetising.

"You good?" Harry's eyes are shot behind his glasses. She doesn't think he's sleeping enough.

"I just want to get out of the splash zone." She inclines her head, they get up and leave.

* * *

The lake is deep and black. She can see the little waves the wind makes. She thinks of little mice running across the surface and being drenched by the tiny storm.

She picks the loose flowers off the grass. The petals are brown at the edges and white to the middle. She likes how they look in her hand. She likes the transformation from human to nature.

Harry's glasses reflect the sun. His lids are closed, he could be sleeping.

"You think they're still eating each other's faces?" He tilts his head to look at her, he smiles when she does.

"Probably."

She likes the way it seems as though the sun will never end.

* * *

Nott walks through the door, empty eyes rimmed red. He's late, she doesn't care.

She watches the way his body falls. Like a satin dress being dropped, he crumples into himself. He stares at the desk.

He isn't even pretending to pay attention today.

She watches his chest, moving quicker. She watches his throat as he swallows, like he's choking down tar. His hand rests on the table, his fingers spread and tense.

She can see his jaw twitching, and she knows he wants to scream.

She thinks of how Harry looks when he doesn't want to talk. His eyes are set, his shoulders are hunched, his temper is high. She remembers the way he would look like that everyday, she remembers wishing he would cry or yell or hit something.

Ron is different. Ron likes to set goals for himself. He likes to see whether he can be louder each time he gets upset. When Ron is angry, people know it.

Nott's fingers are shaking. She watches them, like they're being chilled by a wind she apparently can't feel. His whole body looks frozen, his skin is suffocated.

She reaches her hand out.


	3. His second

**Author's Note: **Yes I'm back, and yes it isn't a long and lengthy one and yes I do apologise but once again that irritating thing called life has decided to knock upon my door. Please enjoy, and if you don't please go eat something tasty then feel better and try again.

Or not.

I don't mind.

To each their own.

* * *

Sometimes he imagines things in different colours. Words and tastes and sounds. He thinks of what they would look like. He does that with people too.

To him, most people are grey. A mix of light and dark. The scale can go either way.

His mother was almost white, with tiny hints of blue. His father is jet black, if there were a darker colour his father is that too.

He can't make out what colour he is. He thinks 50/50 most of the time.

But when he took a shortcut through a tapestry and saw her like that, with Draco's hand up her skirt, her head rolled back he was the most blinding scarlet.

He was in a room of auburn tones with a ferocity he could not control. Theodore did not get angry. He did not yell, he did not fight, he did not become unruly.

But all he can see is her floral dress ripped up her thigh, her stockings in a bundle at her ankles and he wants to break things.

The touch feels like the colour of lightning at first, then it cools down and he can't pinpoint what the colour is because all he can feel is her palm against his fingers. And all he can think about is how they've stopped shaking.

Her eyes remind him of the colour of leather lace up shoes.

* * *

That night the shadows rush by him and in the light of his wand he studies the pages. He hopes the puddles won't grow tonight.

Something she had written on that parchment stands out to him. She didn't write like the book did, she wrote how she saw things. She wrote about what one of the runes meant, and her cursive becomes rushed –the feathers running faster.

It looks thoughtless. It looks lost. It looks as though she became someone else, someone who wanted her opinion on paper. She is someone who wanted him to read it.

_'This one is a brilliant study (page 257 in the book) because there's nothing like it at all in the English language. There are so few runes we've discovered that are similar to this one, because we can't define it. We can only describe what they must have meant. It's fascinating. Babblin will probably test us on this.'_

He writes all he can find about the rune. He hopes it sticks.

* * *

The way their hands look together is wrong. Draco interlocking his fingers, Pansy's itching into a claw. Draco needs to touch her, he can see it in his eyes. Like there's a rope in Draco's stomach that pulls him to her.

Like he's a bee, trying to rest on the flowers on her dress. Theo imagines them dancing, Draco's hands looking for something he can't find. His fingerprints leaving black stains on her skin.

Theodore looks out across the hall, gold painted across bent heads and tired laughs. The voices feel like darkness, blue and black and yellow pin pricks of stars filling the hollow.

He imagines that unruly hair in delicately pinned rolls that sit on the edges of her shoulders. He imagines wearing the shoes in her eyes and watching her smoke, watching her lips part, watching the release and watching her lids close for a moment.

He imagines taming that unruly hair with the very tips of his fingers. He brushes it back ever so slightly, and walks home with her eyes and her lips.

"You're okay though, right?" He imagines a harp playing while Blaise speaks, he imagines pouring bourbon so he doesn't have to look at the frown between Blaise's eyebrows.

It is the first time Blaise has asked in eight months. He used to envy how easily Blaise would be lost in himself, how he never cared about others, how he trusted them. But Blaise is like a hedge maze, he's the same until he isn't. And in so many ways Theodore has hit dead ends, he can never find Blaise's centre. He doesn't know if Blaise ever finishes.

But if he does it's the look Blaise has now. His dark eyes sparking a soft and deep mahogany in the pits of Theodore's ribs.

* * *

Sometimes when he imagines he can sleep, he feels like he's swimming in his sheets. Because they surround him, folding around his bones and he can cover his head and disappear.

The breathing of his roommates sounds like the tide when it's dark and early morning, the beach in the middle of winter. He feels swallowed whole in the linen.

His mother used to paint patterns on the ceiling above his bed. Only when it was storming, and the dark seemed endless she'd light her wand and tell him tales of people who led incredible lives of love and laughter. He'd always fall asleep before the ending, so he never found out if they left.

He imagines them now, trapped in their perfect existence like animals in soft cages. He imagines the way the darkness looks to them, and how they wish upon the moon.


	4. Her second

_**Author's Note:**_I am exhausted. Writing is so hard I don't even know if there is a plot to this just enjoy the pretty writing and metaphors.

* * *

It's quiet in the common room. The fire is dying down and they're all too lazy to light it again.

Ron sits back in a chair, dozing off, his legs bent at awkward angles. She watches the sparks flicker on and off like little lights blowing out.

Harry's glasses reflect the light like tiny mirrors in his eyes and she thinks of the way people see what they want to see. She imagines seeing only light for the rest of her life.

She places a hand on his left shoulder blade, feeling how cold he is beneath his clothes. "You okay?" She whispers.

"Sirius." He replies and she realises why his jaw is so stiff.

* * *

There are lights and there is music and there are flowing dresses and glinting sparkles and laughs. She can see it all from her where she's crouched, just a head below everyone else. Cormac had given her the most ghastly smirk, pointing to the red, leafy blossoms floating above their heads.

She'd voiced digestive distress and had run.

But everyone looks happy from here, all lit up and alive. Like they've put on their costumes and become real for one night. And nothing else exists.

It saddens her.

A hand wraps around her elbow and she is hoisted to her feet. "What are you doing?" Next to Harry is a misty-eyed Luna, taking in the party like a cat surrounded by shiny objects.

"I've just escaped-" _That _sounds suspicious, and she's not too fond of insinuating anything overly scandalous, "I've just left Cormac."

Harry grins.

* * *

She's dancing in the golden light, watching the colours of her dress reflect and change and move. She doesn't even mind that Cormac's hands are drifting south of her waist, she's too entranced.

She bends her neck back, staring at the ceiling. She lets the warmth breath through her skin. She lifts up her arms, touching the laughter and the music and the lights.

Cormac's hands explore her. She feels his hunger moaning into the crook of her neck.

She smooths her thumb over his lips, silencing him. His eyes sink into caves.

* * *

The sky is dark. She can see the shadow of clouds through her window. She reaches up a hand, touching the glass. She wants to break it. She wants to let in the wind that will wash away the stains from where he'd touched her. She can still feel his hands all over her.

But at least she'd felt something at all.

* * *

She runs way from the noise, the screaming and the shouting and the catcalls. She thinks of herself much shorter, with hair she couldn't tame and she thinks of herself running down the Charms corridor, trying her best not to cry.

She doesn't cry about it anymore. It only stings her insides and the wind feels clean against her face.

There is a ringing against the walls. It sounds like '_Mudblood!_'

* * *

He's livid. He's screaming and cursing and his nose crumples in disgust and his eyes are daggers.

And she sits there. Her eyes feel heavy like stones, they weigh down in the back of her head.

"Why _him?!_" The words travel on the saliva flying from between his lips like acid rain. She closes her eyes.

"Why Lavender, Ronald? Why her?" His teeth clench. The stones itch against his brain, the acid floods her skull.

* * *

Silence rings through the corridor, like a dripping tap in the early morning when the light has not yet broken the space between the floor and the mattress. She feels so exhausted, as though that dripping silence had woken her.

The lines in the concrete wall draw shapes into the heaving skin of her back. She concentrates on the feeling of her fingers on her forehead, her palms massaging the bloodshot veins in her eyes.

She concentrates on her teeth and how they fight against each other so she can make sure she doesn't get too loud.

The air rushes in, knocking over her lungs and her kidneys and her ribs. It creates a heavy ruckus.

Her shoulders tap the wall, she's shivering. She hasn't got her cloak.

Her hands move, cupping the sides of her arms and she hopes for solitude. She hopes for the tap to stop dripping.

Once, twice, three times and water hits the corridor at every angle, on every surface. She's drowning in the droplets.

Four, five, six and it is larger, it is heavier, the ocean grows closer with every passing second.

She waits for the inevitable drench. She waits for the ice to invade her skin and curl around the empty base of her stomach.

Closer and closer. Silver light creates a ring around her huddled form. The tap reflects, the water halts.

The silence calls, "Granger?"


	5. His third

**Author's Note: **Well damn it's been a little while sorry. Okay so there was some concern that the perspective (being either Hermione or Theodore) isn't made clear. Well, the chapter titles do clearly state which is what. Furthermore, I do alternate each chapter like I don't change perspectives mid-chapter. (I'm not going to write "_ POV" at the beginning because that would mean it's time for me to give up on life altogether so um infer from the context or read the chapter titles? Or just, idk, have fun).

* * *

He thumbs the hem of his shirt. Unwashed, like himself. The bottoms of his pants were getting dirty and ripped. He tucks them into his socks now.

He pads along the hall. He likes the feeling of cold concrete underneath his feet. He likes how it seems as though he's touching it, when he isn't. He likes the school when it's empty. The portraits are silent, sleeping, steady breathing of ageless personalities accompanies the dragging of his bones through the air.

He imagines smoke flowing around him. It fills the gaps between his ribs and his fingers, it holds his hand. He imagines that she hadn't draped that floral dress over Draco's body. He imagines that his own pressed suit had laid underneath it instead, the flowers drifting off on the pillow of his trousers.

He imagines the deep smell of brandy hanging between them, hugging her stockings and stroking his eyes.

The record scratches. The music he was composing falls to his feet.

There is a sound, like stones being skipped over a lake made of glass and he stills. He hasn't been scared of the dark since he last slept.

But he is scared of that noise. He is scared of the glass breaking, of the stones sinking to the bottom. He is scared of what he will find when he walks into the shadows.

He pulls back the velvet curtain.

The stones fall together, like squeezing a wet shirt dry. He imagines switching the grey stones for pearls, white as paper with tints of pink.

"Granger?" She stares at him with those leather eyes. Her perfume smells of anger and hurt and confinement. He imagines the lake made of green glass like a bottle. He imagines her beneath it, tapping ever so delicately.

He places his hand on hers, staring through the thick green surface. He imagines makeup running down her face. He imagines red painted lips, and instead he finds lips that have been bitten raw.

* * *

"How's your father?" Draco is tense. Theo knows that he would have cursed anyone else if they had asked that question. But Draco is wearing thin. His eyes sink into his head. He is torn. He is thin.

Theo thinks maybe he hasn't been sleeping either.

* * *

He watches the light against the ice. He listens to the sounds reflecting off and up into the waiting clouds full of grey.

He likes the winter. He likes the feeling of the cold against his veins. He likes the way his bones float in the thin air.

He imagines streets made of ice. He imagines the constant sound of shoe against the mirror water and he imagines the way it feels. Like he's living in a tap dance, moving with strangers, wrapped up in the warmth of piano keys.

He sinks further into the snow. It clings to the skin of his elbows.

He can't breathe. He's suffocated from head to tow in clouds. Big and grey clouds and he can feel the edges of water droplets pushing into his eyes.

Like they're trying to steal his mind. They're trying to freeze it. They're trying to bury him deep. They're trying to bury him deep enough to sing him asleep.

He's so tired.

His mother's hand is stroking his cheek. He's eight years old and he's learning to swim. He hates the way the sea licks all the way up his neck.

He lies on the mud bank and she soothes him. She warms his blue fingertips.

"I've got you." She whispers. Her hair falls from her twisted bun. He counts the number of pink white pearls hanging from her neck.

There are seven before they disappear into the comfort of her locks.

He sinks into the clouds. He feels the rain.

He falls asleep. His mother's hands cradle his neck.

* * *

The ghost shakes. It is the colour of the sheets that fall like stone against his body.

The ghost shakes and Theo wonders if there's a window open. Theo wonders if the ghost is still lying in the snow. Theo wonders if he is still lying in the snow.

The ghost places its hand on his cheek. He can't feel its skin.

"Damn it." The ghost takes Draco's form. He is transparent from head to toe. Theo envies him. Theo wants to disappear like Draco.


	6. Her third

**Author's Note: **Eh. Tired. Writer's goddamn block. Hope this is fun (it's not. It's vague and poety and idk why you're bothering).

* * *

The water crawls up and around her skin. It clings and moves and she feel its comfort at her ankles.

The trees are dusted with ice petals and she feels the way they breathe. Like winter in deep slumber and she can feel its dreams on her cheeks.

She strokes the hums of deep imagination with her trembling fingers. She doesn't like wearing gloves. She can't feel the sleep around her when she wears gloves.

A figure huddles in the frozen flowers; petals hugging the frailty she can make out beneath his clothes. He is a pile of splinters. He is drowning in the snow.

She reaches out and ice fingers meet an ice cheek. He is carved sharp like a statue. He is stone. He is stone splinters.

She covers her palm with stray shards from his cheek. She can feel him digging in between the prints of her skin.

* * *

He sits in his cloth mountains. They encircle him, weighing him down like sacks of water suspending from his bones.

His dry fingertips scratch against the textbook pages. She watches the dust lift and wear him down, with every breath he seems to be across from her a little less.

He stills looks the way he did in the snow.

She doesn't know if he can hear her, and yet she speaks anyway. The way her voice bounces off the edges of every desk and wall and the window behind her makes her insides go cold. And yet, when she pauses there is a downpour in her lungs.

The rain stops. There is a leaking tap and she can hear it, the echoing in her ribs and she waits for the silence to freeze it. But there is a warmth, and it strokes the knuckles of her hand.

She meets the suffocated grey in his eyes. He stares at her. With his eyes on her, she feels like someone else.

* * *

Ron's face is cold. Harry's eyes are rimmed purple. Lavender is slowly making her way through the cutlery, bending and shaping it and grinding her teeth.

"So I take it the breakup didn't go well." Ron scowls at her words.

She wants to smooth the crease between his eyebrows. She wishes she hadn't bent his face like that.

She swallows. His eyes shoot through her. She can feel them pricking at the veins surrounding her heart.

* * *

Nott's hands curl and uncurl and curl and uncurl and she stares at him and his fluttering eyelashes. She imagines his thoughts like little moving lights and she imagines his mind like the city at night. And all the thoughts he ignores light up and go out and he pushes them between his fist.

She moves her fingers and dips them into the lights and watches how they collect under her nails and between her knuckles. He closes his hand, the lights caught between her skin and his.

* * *

She watches the way Nott's eyes look at the spaces between the table and the faces. As though he wants to place his gaze somewhere much nicer than the empty spans of air but he knows he shouldn't. She can still see his face consumed by white. It hides in the cold moving of his throat as he swallows every so often.

Harry's arm finds its way around her middle. She leans into his lukewarm chest.

His embrace feels like the summers that she used to spend at her aunt's by the sea. And the endless sky and the sand between her toes. She would wear dresses that had hems that collected the tide for her to bring back home.

* * *

She had never liked heights. Watching the players fade through the air still makes her stomach upset. She imagines them stilling and then falling like stones and splashing to the ground, robes billowing around them like feathers.

Green and red blur the clouds. She can see Harry's glasses flashing, the light catching. She wonders how he can see. She wonders how he stays on that small plank of wood.

There is a pause, a shout from the commentator and Harry descends. Another win. She moves through the crowd, elbows barely avoiding her skull.

* * *

Her head sways. A bottle rests delicately in her hand. Parvati and Ginny have their arms wrapped in hers and the three of them are skipping. It's much more amusing and she thinks it's because of the night and the stars and the just-larger-than-a-quarter moon that casts stretched shadows on the floor.

The darkness mirrors their actions, soon joining with three more and they link arms and dance.

"Well hello there." A satin voice becomes the music and the shadows freeze, swaying, staring at their partners.

She studies the curves of grey against the brightness cast by the window.

"What are you doing this side of the castle?" Ginny's figure moves on the wood. Hermione's dark mirrored arm reaches out and strokes Ginny's back. It looks so strange, as though she is comforting a sadness inside of her friend. She smiles, watching the shapes move.

A long stringy shadow moves through and toward hers. It takes her dark fingers. It's soft and warm, pricking little feelings inside her stomach.

The pricks start in her cheek. She looks into Nott's dark eyes and smiles.


End file.
